I'm about to build a new PC and would like you all to look over my parts list that I have built and offer any suggestions.

I'll be using this PC for both work and gaming. My work is web-based so I'm not too concerned about the specs for that. As for gaming, I do a lot of racing (mainly iRacing) and am building this to be able to handle 3 monitors. I play all kinds of other games, but don't plan on doing much triple-monitor gaming other than racing and flight simming (no need for 3 monitors on XCOM, IMO). I'd like to keep the budget pretty close to where it is ($2000 plus or minus a couple hundred)

Anyway, the link to my PCPartPicker.com list is below. I've already got the case and the motherboard so those are set in stone. Thanks for looking!

List is here.

If you're not gonna be doing a lot of encoding or heavy multitasking, there's no point in getting a 3770K over a 3570K, you can save $100 that way and put it towards some other components. Also, if you're going for the GTX 780, make sure you get one with an ACX cooler, it's much better than the default heatsink (such as this). Also if you're planning on overclocking the CPU, that cooler isn't a great choice.

Any reason why you are going with an i7 and 16GB RAM?

How about an additional hard drive ? 250gb fill up pretty fast with modern games.

I have a 3770k and 16 gb of RAM, but my work isn't web based. I use it to edit video on Adobe Premiere. Maybe you're trying to future proof it so you only have to buy a video card in a few years?

But I gotta say you should definitely pony up and get a fully modular Seasonic Power Supply.

I built pretty much the same computer you're going to make.

250GB is nothing. Add at least a 1TB HDD to that. Put your OS on the SSD, and other things you want to load fast.

If you're just gaming, you don't need 16GB of RAM. You can also find much cheaper RAM. I know 2x4GB G.Skill Ripjaws X was like $53 on Newegg about a week ago.

If you're not planning on doing SLI in the future, 700W power supply isn't really necessary. You could knock that down a bit to like a 600W.

I personally recommend getting an IPS monitor over TN. I have the Asus VS239H-P (similar price range as the monitor you've chosen, 5ms response time,and 0.6" smaller than yours), and it's fantastic.

I think its pretty damn obvious why hes gone with an i7 and 16GB of RAM. 16GB of RAM is extremely usefull to have, yes it may depend on exactly what he is doing but all the comments for games dont use it is usless shoutouts when there are SEVERAL games out there that will use LOTS of RAM, Battlefield 4 and Crysis 3 use over HALF of my 16GB RAM alone. Games like Planetary Annihilation that is just about to get released next year use ALL the RAM you have because of the very nature of that game, with massive amounts of players on an unlimited unit RTS game (which will be the future direction of all RTS) as well as more and more games starting to switch to procedurely generated worlds, (planetary annihilation / minecraft / No Mans Sky) as examples will ABSOLUTELY need more than the standard 8GB of ram if you want to play a game and have your system not come to a crawl.

This build is absolutely obvious a future proof build, the i7 is part of that, and to say that its overkill is a stupid statement in my opinion, i5s are only quad cores which are just about to be obsolete next year with the new line of 8 core CPUs from intel, at least an i7 is practicly an 8-core, in the threading sense, you must always! build the best machine you can build at the time with the money you have. If he knocked down the powersupply to 600WATT, he would have absolutely zero headroom for anything like overclocking or adding additional harddrives or anything of the sort, 750 should be the standard PSU I would reccomend for most PC builders, not all but certianly a gaming machine, wouldn't go lower than the 700 the OP listed. The RAM however should be changed, its makes much better sense to get 2 sticks of 8GB each rather then 4x sticks of 4, it makes the memory run slower unless its a specific quad channel motherboard, it can be very hard to get ram to run at its native speed across all 4 slots. I will second of the 780 by going with one of the named branded 780s simply just to get the better cooling system on them, the 780 does run hot, if you can afford it at least.

Overall I think the machine is brilliant and very future proof for many up coming games like Star Citizen, Watch Dogs and Tom Clany's: The division. Just some minor tweaks with the RAM selection (amount is good) and perhaps a named 780, and your golden for years.

(don't mean to offend anyone if I did just pretty obvious what hes going for with the build)

Listen to this man, for he speaks wise truths.

@vackillers: Has there been any indication that future PC games will properly use Intel's hyper-threading? Game developers never seem to comment on structuring game engines that can benefit from tightly scheduled computation tasks.

That's a fuckload of memory.

You might want to consider G-Skill Ripjaws instead, you'd save $40.

Almost every game uses intel's hyper threading, just download ANY CPU monitor utility / gadget program that shows your CPU load on each core and you will notice without a doubt that ALL cores get used at some point across any game you play. I'm using both AMD & Intel CPUs and games from 2 years ago started to use all cores/threads at some point durring a game, the more you have just means less stress on the 4 main cores you have. There are some exceptions but not many, like Sim City (the new shitty one) which is only optimized to use 3 cores, 2 cores for the game and 1 core for the sound (completely retarded setup and maxis should be shot). Again, Crysis 3 / Battlefield 3 / Battlefield 4 / but some others just to list a few, Supreme Commander series / Dawn Of Fantasy / Skyrim / Fifa 13/14....

Game devs dont comment on stuff like this often because they don't want to get into a flame war AMD vs Intel where both cpus are as good as eachother when it comes to gaming (not the other rending/econding/video editing / sound creating stuff).

Thanks for the suggestions guys. To answer a few questions:

I am for sure future-proofing this rig. I did that with my last one and it's just now started to show its age after 5 years.

For the hard drive, I forgot to put in there that I've already got a 2TB drive that will go in for data storage.

As for the i7, I do a lot of flight simming and X-Plane is actually more dependent on processor speed than graphical speed, plus I'll probably be doing some photo and video editing on there as well.

For work, I have multiple browsers and programs running so the 16GB will help out with that (but yeah, it's still probably overkill).

I'll check out the cheaper RAM and a better cooled video card.

Thanks again, and keep the suggestions coming.

Edit: Punctuation

cool... Think your build is fine jaredog, keep the RAM just get 2 8GB instead its not going to be overkill for the new gen games.

If Battlefield 4 and Crysis 3 are using over 8GB of RAM, you have a problem. That seems ridiculously high. There's not reason to get 16GB right now, and when the time comes it's ridiculously easy to upgrade RAM (unless you want DDR4, but that's another story). It's likely to even be cheaper, since RAM prices are outrageous right now. I do agree that 2x8GB is better if he does decide to go with 16GB, though.

I'm doubtful that 8-core CPUs are going to be taken advantage of in the near future. Gaming is much more GPU intensive than CPU intensive. Better to go with a cheaper CPU and upgrade the GPU to a 780Ti or (non-reference) R9 290X, in my opinion.

I only recommend going with a lower watt PSU if the OP doesn't plan on overclocking or going with SLI or Crossfire.

Now knowing what you're doing with it, I have to say that's a pretty nice build. You already tackled my other issue, which was the hard-drive space, so yeah, maybe trying that better video card isn't the worst idea, especially with 3 monitors.

Ok, I've changed the video card to one with better cooling: Here

And switched to 2x8gb G-Skill RAM (which saves about $30-$40): Here

Hey, why the old 1155 socket? New CPUs for 1150 (4th generation Core i3,5,7) are priced the same. Your hardware is two years old from the start.

@szlifier said:

I bought the motherboard several months ago. Typically, when I build a new PC, I buy the parts as I can afford them (saving the video card for last). I've had the case and motherboard for a while. I just got my Xmas bonus from work and am buying the rest of the parts after Xmas.

@vackillers: Isn't the question not "Do games use hyper threading" but "Do games benefit hyperthreading"? My limited understanding is that hyper threading doesn't emulate cores, but instead is a system that reduces the time a CPU core is idle. The issue with games is that they do not receive any tangible benefit from increased efficiency in serial individual core tasks.

Also, check out this article on several games being run on Haswell i5 and i7. They run each game in two separate settings: one at low resolution/low detail and the other at high resolution/high detail. Games running at high settings are dead even on between i5 and i7 in terms of FPS. Meanwhile, i7 gets a small but significant increase with games running on low settings. So it seems like when a game is running on high graphical settings the GPU becomes the bottleneck. This would make the advantage of an i7 CPU irrelevant. Unfortunately the article I link doesn't test strategy games that have to run tons of gameplay calculations. Another test done by Anandtech using Civ V shows no improvement on FPS when the GPU is the bottleneck and a ~5fps when it is not. I'm not a fan of using FPS to judge this game's performance though; measuring the time it takes for the NPC to take its turn is probably a better indication of game performance.

I say change your PSU, only because I consider OCZ to be an unreliable brand. They are most likely using an OEM for their PSU line, but I doubt they are contracting a company that does quality manufacturing.

I also think you should switch your monitors for IPS or VA displays, but doing so will mean that you will have to increase your budget a lot more.

Awesome on both accounts.........

When it comes to games which actually benefit from hyperthreading it really is just down to personal view, when I myself personally see all threads/cpus being used, I find that to be beneficial no matter which way I'm looking at it, if all cores are getting used then im not wasting any performance, thats how I see it... Games are more dependant on GPUS as some guy above mentioned, and it can be definitely wiser to spend less on an i5 over an i7 and spend all the extra cash you miight save towards a better GPU, but a couple things to note here is that he is already going for a GTX 780, which is one of the best graphics cards on the market today, the Ti / Titans aren't really that much better, but they are better, just not by enough to fork out 700-1000$ for... and if he sli'd up, well, thats a shit ton more than what you would save by dumbing down the CPU and the other thing to note, if it wasn't absolutely clear in the original post by the system specs, he is "FUTURE" proofing the system.. and those threads will be crucial when the new gens start to roll out next year. Games still use a lot of the CPU even though they are more dependant on a GPU, but I can tell ya, an i5 is going to bottleneck that GPU he selected but there are plenty of things that will make use of the extra threads and he is doing other stuff other then gaming as well so its better he goes with an i7 anyway.

As for the games using more RAM then people think, its not about something going seriously wrong, games are software, they are coded to use a set amount of memory, games will have a "set max" limit that will be based on how much available RAM is the total system actually has. This goes back to the early days of Adobe Photoshop, where it would use ALL RAM available, no matter how much you have.... So yes you can run any game with 8GB just fine, but if you do actually have more! then games will actually use more! until they've hit the coded max limit.

Need to be clear here: when I stated my RAM usage was over half of my 16GB RAM, that means 8GB RAM for the game, and then some 20% left for whatever Windows 7 will use ontop of what the game uses... The more RAM you have is ALWAYS better, whether you actually need it or not you never want to run out of resources.

I'm pretty sure you should get a i7 4770k cpu, because it's only 10 dollars more, but the number is like a thousand more.